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This webpage is dedicated to my paternal line, the Richardsons. I dove into their mostly forgotten and unrecorded history with abandon, and after fifteen years of digging, dusting and driving around obscure cemeteries in 3 states, I have found enough pieces of the puzzle to begin a reconstruction of the Richardson journey. This journey, however, is intricately woven into the tapestries of other families history, whose puzzle pieces are an essential part of the whole story.
Truth be told, I've been smitten by the genealogy bug! For me, the missing pieces of the puzzle, however remotely related they may be, will be relevant somehow. The solution to the next mystery is always just around the corner, another yet long forgotten photograph to be discovered in an attic hatbox - somewhere?, another undiscovered cousin, out there? Many mysteries remain! Do you have an attic? Stay, read and experience some of the richness of our family history. Check out "Newspaper Tidbits" for some of our ancestors everyday coming and goings, check out "Thumbnail Sketches" for short biographies of ancestors who left interesting track records. Check out some of the historical documents that relate to our first immigrant, George Richardson. More important, get excited about your family history and start digging. I will share all I have. Perhaps you have the missing puzzle piece. 
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| Photos note: large files can be slow to load! |
| Richardson/ Griffith/ Maloney/ Wiley Photos |
| Richards Photos |
| Wiley/Kettlewell Photos |
| Joseph & Sarah Dickerson Kettlewell Family Photo |
| Joseph & Eliza Kettlewell & Frost Family of California |
| Grandparents |
| Smith Wade Richardson and Alice Helen Thompson |
| Raymond Lamont Lattin and Hazel Inez Cubbage |
| Great Grandparents |
| Eugene Wiley Richardson andSusannah Radcliffe Wade |
| Jesse Elmer Thompson and Eva Fair |
| Ralph A. Lattin and Goldie Agnes Whitley |
| Jacob Elijah Cubage and Nobie Benson | Great Great Great Grandparents |
| Theopolis W. Richardson and Mary Ellen Wiley | Elza Lazier Wade and >Matilda Radcliffe | William Flick Thompson and Nancy Ellen Fulton | George W. Fair and >Elizabeth Emerick | Hall Gilbert Lattin and Elizabeth J. Kelley | John Montgomery Whitley and Anna Theresa Rooney | William Cubage and Mary Benton | Isaac Allen Benson and Mary Malinda Briant Cox | Great Great Great Great Grandparents | Joseph A. Richardson and Sarah J. Williams | Joshua C. Wiley and Mary Ellen Kettlewell |
The First Richardson to Come to America
George W. Richardson
1782-1854
George Richardson immigrated to Stirling Bottom, Meigs County, Ohio in the summer of 1823. George and his family were part of a group of Scottish merchants, farmers and artisans who invested their lives and fortunes in a land purchase from the Ohio Company
Unfortunately for this group of Scottish pioneers death, disease,and homesickness scattered the fledgling company.Only George Richardson and a few others remained.
In the late 1830's George Richardson moved his family to Wheeling, West Virginia where the business opportunities were better.
To my knowledge there are no surviving oral histories to tell us what kind of man George Richardson was, or what his personal trials and tribulations were. Amazingly enough however, we have George's ship arrival information, letters George wrote from Stirling in 1823, his naturalizaton declaration in 1826, and numerous land records from Meigs County, Ohio, and Mason and Ohio County, West Virginia.
From these surviving documents, and several references in the history books, we at least get a glimpse of a very articulate and capable merchant. George's letters to the Glasgow Company in 1823 exuded his excitement for and about the abundant and untapped resources that he saw along the Ohio river, and the prospects for one in his trade.
George left many descendants, many still live along the Ohio River in Ohio and West Virginia. Others followed the call of the West,and can be found and as far away as California, Texas and Oklahoma.
Man could be Joseph Richardson, or David Skinner in Sardis, Ohio (n.d.)